Pages

Friday, April 27, 2018

The Second Pulp Age Dawns

George Martin will not release the book he's been promising for yet another year. At this rate, Godot will arrive first.

While some will repeat the line about Martin not being your bitch, there is a flipside to this: if you don't deliver, the audience isn't required to stick around.

Authors who are not in Martin's position financially don't have the luxury of taking forever to deliver a promised book to a loyal audience, especially now. You are unwise to emulate this behavior; you've got to keep them happy somehow, and as more writers pick up what Nick Cole and Jason Anspach put down that habit will become increasing unacceptable. The audience will desert the slow for the swift.

Pulp Speed, as my fellow #PulpRev folks know it, won't be optional for much longer. That's going to be a shock to a lot of writers, who never expected the Return of the Pulp Age, and its incessant demand for productivity. We're all going to have to be Walter B. Gibson (or as close as we can get) soon enough if we want to do this more than just as a hobby that more-or-less pays for itself.

The difference is that we're not all hustling for magazine publication now, but rather for maximizing the Amazon algorithm such that every book hits big and hard. We're hustling to make Amazon (and its inevitable successors) work for our benefit by ensuring we can ID our audience and satisfy them with exactly what fires them up in entertainment delivered early, often, and repeatedly.

And the SJWs in TradPub will not keep up. All we need to do is answer the cry for order, and the future is ours.